Keep HDGiants Alive! Put $20 into Your Account (UPDATE: Hold that Thought)

HDGiants were certainly the most visible in offering hi-res music but they are far from “the only company out there that dishes high-quality content for your clients.”

http://www.hdtracks.com/ offers hi-res downloads from a number of labels and http://www.itrax.com/ also has a range of such downloads. I’m also aware of specialist labels like Linn Music offering ‘studio master’ resolution downloads.

Jez, you are absolutely right and I’m not quite sure where that faux pas came from. Those companies (and others) do indeed offer HD audio downloads and I will revise my copy.

Yes, I’ve been trying for weeks to add more money to my MusicGiants account, but it won’t allow you to.  I have a track that’s been in my shopping cart for three weeks, but I can’t purchase it.

I do hope MusicGiants can emerge from bankruptcy.  I LOVED them.  I’ve purchased over 200 tracks from them since early 2006.  But one of their big problems, as one article said, was focusing too much on “affluent” customers.

That and almost zero advertising budget.  I wrote several emails to Katherine Ryan lamenting the fact that, although I frequent audiophile bulletin boards such as SteveHoffman.tv, almost NO ONE had heard of MusicGiants.  On several occasions, someone would start at thread entitled something like, “Is there any place to buy lossless downloads?”  This was after MusicGiants had been in existence several years.

I also think that the whole “minimum $20 account balance” thing really put people off.  If they felt they had to do that, they could have at least lowered it to $5.00, like Zune.

The most frequent complaint I heard from potential customers, though, when I tried to sell them on MusicGiants, was regarding the DRM.  “I am not buying a download if it’s DRM’d,” they’d say.

My recommendations to Scott, if he does succed in emerging from Chapter 11, are these (perhaps you could forward them to him, Julie):

1. Sell both lossless and MP3s, as HDTracks very wisely does.
2. Either lower the minimum account balance to $5.00, or simply charge per song.
3. Try to get the record companies to agree to let you go DRM-free, perhaps selling files in FLAC format.
4. Spend more money on advertising, and by all means, advertise it as a “CD burn on demand” service.  Most people can’t afford big hard drives to play their music.  I think pointing out that you can burn true CD-quality discs yourself would be a big selling point, and something that really was not emphasized before.